


comedy's dead

by girlsarewolves



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games), Batman: Arkham - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fucked Up Relationship, Gen, Harley's always in a dark place but it's a lot lonelier, Harley's in a dark place, Mental Instability, Past Abuse, Past Torture, Post-Canon, References to Character Death, Stockholm Syndrome, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, but written to be interpreted either way, not inherently shippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-22 07:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6070870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/pseuds/girlsarewolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Guilt's like a weed. Let it take root, and you'll never rid yourself of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	comedy's dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheYearOfTheWolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheYearOfTheWolf/gifts).



> For the prompt: Jason/Harley, Agelast - A person who never laughs.
> 
> I'm not even sure what this is, but this is what I got inspired to write for this prompt. Jason and Harley are tricky characters for me to get a handle on, so it's on the shorter side. Maybe I can work my way up to something longer? Partially inspired by the Jason Todd prequel comic to the game, but familiarity with it isn't necessary. My apologies for the overuse of the weed/vine metaphor. Feedback is always appreciated!
> 
> Trigger warnings for: references to past abuse and torture, Stockholm Syndrome, mental instability, and Harley having some really dark trains of thought.

* * *

Guilt - and all its ilk - is a useless emotion. More than that, it's a suffocating one. Regret, remorse, feeling bad and disgusted by the things you've done or caused or lost or thrown away. Guilt is a seed - let it take root, and you're suddenly struggling against vines of 'Why did I do that?' and 'I'm a horrible person.'  
  
Harley wonders, sometimes - to herself, only ever to herself - how Joker had kept the vines at bay. She supposes it makes sense she can't; she's got a soft spot for Poison Ivy. So she's already vulnerable to weeds, Mistah J would say.  
  
But Mistah J's not here anymore. Ivy isn't either. Not even Batman - the real one, the scary one who you never knew how far he'd go but at the same time you always knew he'd never go too far - remains.  
  
Harley doesn't even have the remnants, the citizens tainted by her Puddin's blood, to keep her company. Tell her jokes, make her laugh. These days she's never even smiling.  
  
There's no one to help her weed out the vines, make her laugh away the useless, suffocating, crushing feelings of remorse; of shame. Sanity creeps in like one of Ivy's plants, the kind that wraps around you and crushes you like a python, breaks all the bones in your body - and she almost misses one of Joker's bad moods, when he'd break a few just for kicks.  
  
Least then there'd be some laughter in her life.  
  
The Bat's birds flitter around the city, the new Bat - the fraud, her Puddin' would say, the fake, the phony - keeps a vigil and has the others cautious, uncertain. Nobody knows anymore what the rules are. They're all remains of a different era; Joker and Batman are gone. New players are coming in, ones who don't share the same codes.  
  
Like _him_. He might not go by the Arkham Knight anymore, but he's still the same ruthless, trigger happy asshole. The Birds don't like him, Harley knows that. The Rogues don't either; Harley really knows that.  
  
She doesn't like him either. Nothing personal, actually - or maybe it's extremely personal. She doesn't like the emotions he stirs up in her; the hard to breath, can't move, can't even struggle ones.  
  
If only he'd hit her. Knock her around some. Knock some insanity back into this thick skull of hers. Hell, she'd actually freakin' deserve it from him.  
  
The Arkham Knight - Red Hood - Jason Todd never touches her. He intimidates, threatens, pressures verbally, sure. Mostly about wanting cuts of her business, or about sticking out of certain areas. Sometimes just because, because he hates her and she's the only one left for him to hate - besides himself, anyway.  
  
Harley doesn't get it.  
  
The vines, they're everywhere. They tighten when he shows up, and clarity comes like a dose of Scarecrow's fear toxin, only much, much worse. And she'd be still, she'd let him, because what's the point of fighting back?  
  
She didn't fight back against Joker when he knocked her around. She told herself she deserved it - but she knows, oh, God, she knows now that she never really did, not from him. She'd let Jason do it, too, and this time when she said she deserved it, it'd be the truth.  
  
"You never smile anymore, Harley," he says to her one night, when the men are asleep and the babies fed, and she's thinking - ironically, maybe? - about her Red. There's a hard edge to his smile. "Come on. Nobody likes a sad clown."  
  
And she can't help but stare at the J branded into his skin. She thinks of the things Joker did to him; she thinks more about the things she did to him to make Joker happy. She thinks about the things Joker did to her, about the things he threatened to do to Ivy when she'd really pissed him off.  
  
Harleen knows they're both shells, hollowed out by a sick fuck hung up on his greatest enemy. Torn apart and put back together to be funhouse mirrors reflecting his own image back at him. And she laughs - bitter and tearful and it's worth it for the haunted look on Jason's face, like he's been where she is a hundred times.  
  
"What can I say? Comedy's dead."


End file.
